Mac OS® X Leopard™ For Dummies®

Chapter 14. Publish or Perish: The Fail‐Safe Guide to Printing

In This Chapter

• Connecting a printer

• Using Page Setup to prepare your document for printing

• Printing to most printers

• Mastering the printing process

When you want to get what's on your screen onto paper, printing under Mac OS X should be as simple as pressing the keyboard shortcut ⌘+P and then pressing Return or Enter. Happily, that's usually just how easy printing something is; when it isn't, printing can turn into a raging nightmare. If you configure your printer and printing software properly, however, printing is as easy as can be. And that's pretty darn simple.

In this chapter, I scare away the bogeymen to help you avoid any printing nightmares. I walk you through the entire process as though you just unpacked a new printer and plugged it in.

Before Diving In . . .

Before I even start talking about hooking up printers, you should know a few essential things. So here's a little list that tells you just what those things are:

• Read the documentation that came with your printer. Hundreds of different printer makes and models are available for the Mac, so if I contradict something in your printer manual, follow your manual's instructions first. If that effort doesn't work, try it my way — use the techniques that you read about in the rest of this chapter.

• The Print and Page Setup sheets differ slightly (or even greatly) from program to program and from printer to printer. Although the examples I show you in this chapter are representative ...